Stephan Clark

Assistant Professor MFA Director of Creative Writing

Stephan Eirik Clark is the author of Sweetness #9, a novel (Little, Brown & Co. 2014) and Vladimir’s Mustache (Russian Life Books 2012), a short story collection that was named a finalist for the 2013 Minnesota Book Award. His short fiction has been published in such literary journals as Witness, Ninth Letter, and Cincinnati Review, while hs creative non-fiction has twice been recognized as notable in the Best American Essays anthology. Professionally represented as a screenwriter while living in Los Angeles, Stephan has had his stories and screenwriting optioned multiple times, and been honored by the Monterey County Film Commission and Francis Ford Coppola’s American Zoetrope film studios.

A former Fulbright Fellow to Ukraine and one-time member of USC Film School, Stephan worked as a print and radio journalist before returning to academia. He earned his master’s degree in English from the University of California, Davis and a PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Southern California. His scholarly interests include the grotesque, post-World War II American literature, Denis Johnson, and the literature of California and the American West. In addition to having lived in five states and five countries, Stephan has taught at UC Davis, USC, Reed College, Belgorod State University, in Russia, and Kharkov National University, in Ukraine. At Augsburg, he teaches a wide variety of courses in the MFA Program (screenwriting, fiction) and at undergraduate level, including fiction writing, screenwriting, and the literature of the grotesque.